The basic concept of a scanner is well known in the prior art. Several devices have been invented to facilitate the scanning and producing reproductions of three-dimensional objects.
It is clear that no prior art patents disclose a scanner capable of scanning the minute details of the surface of a cylindrical object. Traditionally, flatbed scanners have been used to scan images of two-dimensional objects, or alternatively scan two-dimensional scans of three-dimensional objects. Systems have been developed which modify flatbed scanners to attempt to scan three-dimensional objects. For example U.S. Pat. No. 5,898,508, issued to Bekanich, discloses an apparatus for producing multidimensional images or reproductions of three-dimensional objects. The Bekanich invention attempted to solve the problem of scanning a three-dimensional object by surrounding the object with housing with a reflective surface. However, this solution does not satisfactorily reproduce the minute images on the surface of a cylindrical object such as a fingerprint on a shell casing and reproduce the image as a two-dimensional image for forensic analysis.
Many scanning systems use triangulation schemes whereby multiple cameras take images which can then be recreated within a coordinate system. An example of a three-dimensional scanner designs is U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,481, issued to Lee et al. for three-dimensional scanning system that scans a three-dimensional object and calculates a three-dimensional coordinate data from a surface of the object. The three-dimensional scanning system has a photoelectron detector, a rotational scanning device, a drive device, an image processing circuit, and an operational control device. The problem involves scanning an object that is three-dimensional with a flatbed scanner that is two-dimensional. The inventor has attempted to solve the problem by using a rotating scanning device that scans the outer surface of a three-dimensional object. However, this solution is inadequate because it does not allow the scanning device to scan the entire surface area of the object while in close proximity to the glass of the scanner.
Alternatively, manipulating lighting to create multiple scans having different degrees of shading can be processed to recreate a three-dimensional image. However, in each of these systems, the entire surface of the object is not scanned. Additionally, many of these systems are only capable of scanning a surface contour and do not truly scan the surface. U.S. Pat. No. 6,885,479 issued to Pilu for a curled surface imaging system for de-warping images of a developable surface, including developable curled surfaces, and in particular of images of curled documents. However, in the Pilu scanner, the object to be scanned needs to be entirely illuminated with light of sufficient quantity under the same conditions from outside the scanning area of the camera, so as not to interfere with the scanning of the camera between the camera and the object. As a result, a plurality of lighting apparatuses are installed around the camera. If the camera is far away from the object to be scanned, lighting apparatuses producing a great amount of light are used.
Other prior art imaging processes employ cameras which rotate slowly about a three-dimensional object and signals from those cameras are fed into suitable computers to produce two or three-dimensional images of the three-dimensional object. Still other systems such as a Cyberware 3-D digitizer employ laser and video based technology to scan a three-dimensional object and then feed that information to suitable computer operated equipment to produce two or three-dimensional reproductions of the three-dimensional object. The signal information may also be sent to an automated milling machine which may create a physical reproduction of the three-dimensional object. Although this system is highly sophisticated and accurate, it is very expensive and, as a practical matter, is not affordable to many users.
Thus it is readily apparent that there is a long felt need for a scanning device which scans the entire surface of a three-dimensional object modified to rotate a three-dimensional cylindrical object as it is being scanned along the two-dimensional surface of the flatbed scanner.